Join us for the second episode of The Three Saïdas, as artist Saddie Choua returns from a summer in Lebanon, where she was in residence at Hunna Arts Culture Center. 

Choua shares what she carried back with her — images, texts, encounters — as the starting point for a collective conversation. Together we will read from Novas Cartas Portuguesas, the book written by the three Marias that lies at the heart of this trajectory. Reading together, looking together, speaking together: this is the practice. Nika Švab and Hala El Moussawi rejoin as interlocutors. 

The evening gathers around questions that surfaced in conversation with Hala: What is solidarity, and at what point does it become performance? How do we care for one another without reducing people to their need? And what does it mean, as an artist, to remain present in times of genocide and colonial violence — not as a statement, but as a choice made again and again? 

The Three Saïdas is a long-term development trajectory at NW, inspired by the three Portuguese writers who, in 1972, wrote Novas Cartas Portuguesas together under dictatorship. A group of women coming together to think, to make, to be in company — in times that demand it. 

Programme
14:00–17:00 Circle conversation
17:00–18:00 Shared meal 

With Saddie Choua, Nika Švab and Hala El Moussawi. In collaboration with Be-Part, ROBIN and RITCS. This event is free and open to all. 

Nika Švab is a literary comparatist and dramaturg. She studied at the University of Ljubljana and DAMU in Prague, and works as a writer, dramaturg and critic — at the intersection of text, theatre and critical reflection. She lives in Ghent. 

Hala El Moussawi is a PhD researcher at the Cosmopolis Centre for Urban Research at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, with a background in architecture and urban studies. Her research examines how refugees settle in cities, which housing trajectories they follow, and what it means to “arrive” — even after receiving protection status. She works for Hunna Arts Culture Center from Brussels.